Nil by Mouth
by Missie2
Summary: The one order you can't expect a pearl to follow is to open their mouth.


**Nil by Mouth**

Yet another drabble. My laptop is back but I'm low on time.

…..

 _In the desert_

 _I saw a creature, naked, bestial,_

 _Who, squatting upon the ground,_

 _Held his heart in his hands,_

 _And ate of it._

 _I said, "Is it good, friend?"_

" _It is bitter—bitter," he answered;_

" _But I like it_

" _Because it is bitter,_

" _And because it is my heart."_

 _-In the Desert_

 _Stephen Crane_

It was an acknowledged curiosity, though not one that was spoken of much. The owners of pearls came across it when their masses were compromised by the chemicals they'd imbibed, and often by the time the next cycle had wheeled around they'd forgotten all about it. And in any case, the chemicals are expensive and it would be ridiculously extravagant to waste them on a pearl for anything more than a joke.

They didn't need the chemicals of course; they were beings that had evolved long past the need to ingest their energy physically. The chemicals were recreational, little subtle temporary changes to their mass that made them feel lighter, faster, brighter. Compound mixes to sip in tall glasses for a slow release of calm, a pipe of singed gallium to induce euphoria, a capsule of lithium to bring a peaceful trance. For gems that could afford it, it was an excellent way to pass the time.

The phenomenon popped up from time to time on open message holos, a gem would talk about how they had tried to get their pearl to inhale some smoke or take a sip of compound mix just to see what would happen, but the pearl would turn their head away, clamp their mouth shut, and the confused owner would give up, maybe groggily recall it later.

It was strange, because it was widely believed that pearls could not refuse an order, any order. But somehow this was one thing they did refuse. Unless they were actively held down and their mouths forced open, they would refuse.

Was it a glitch? A firewall, a failsafe of some sort. Perhaps the chemicals would have some terrible effect on them that was in the owner's manual that nobody ever bothered to read and their refusal was a built-in override to prevent them from breaking down. Nobody really gave it that much thought.

Unless the pearl was in need of a repair, then the owner would learn that unlike other gems that could avail of soldered patches, pearls required a tube down the throat of their manifested form and a slow trickle of liquidated nacre and calcium. Even during these essential repairs they refused to open their mouths, and repair technicians would have to crack open their jaws with a vice.

It was brutal and unpleasant to watch, even for gems that weren't all that sentimental about their pearls. They preferred to put the matter out of their head until the next party, when it occurred to them to wonder again. Unpleasant as it was, essential repairs were hardly the worst or most dangerous thing for a pearl to undergo. So why then this reluctance, if they could call it that?

How would a creature incapable of rational thought even think to say no in the first place?

 _It wasn't a thought, just a reaction. Deep and visceral, written into the grains of their being._

 _Nil by mouth._

 _From the very beginning, before coherent thought,in the calcium baths, there was an opening and a tube that fed a steady flow of grains to build the gem. Then the invasion, the object pushed into the opening and lodged there, a foreign entity that had no business being there. Grain by grain, they were melded around the entity as it pulsed with disruptive energy._

 _After the baths, when they were whole, repairs were needed when tasks were performed incorrectly. They strived to be perfect, to keep themselves safe, to obey orders and avoid the repair personnel and their tubes wherever possible._

 _As pearls were breakable, and disposable, but the nacre that formed their gem was valuable and finite. No problem, it could be recycled. A broken pearl could be patched with the nacre salvaged from a pearl broken beyond repair._

 _Therein lay the dread of the tubes, that fused their jaws shut. The trace memory of the nacre from a destroyed pearl brought the feeling of multiple repairs before death, tube after tube, shock after shock, a hundred forced intrusions. Even if the mind did not conjure these memories, the mass felt it like an echo._


End file.
